Justin Lin is set to direct the upcoming film adaptation of Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Lin is best known for his work on a number of Fast & Furious movies, and was the director of the series from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006 until Fast & Furious 6 in 2013.
It won’t mark the first time Lin has set his sights on outer space, as he also directed Star Trek Beyond in 2016 – and later returned to the Fast & Furious series to direct 2021’s F9 (in which he sent Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson into literal orbit in a 1984 Pontiac Fiero).
The Helldivers movie has been written by Gary Dauberman, the writer of several Annabelle films and The Nun – as well as the co-writer of 2017’s It and the writer of its 2019 sequel, It Chapter Two.
Sony Pictures’ and PlayStation Productions’ Helldivers movie was announced early this year at Sony’s CES 2025 press conference. The project comes in the wake of the immense success of Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2, which became PlayStation’s fastest-selling game of all time following its initial launch in February 2024, selling over 12 million copies in its first 12 weeks on sale.
Heavily inspired by Paul Verhoeven’s vision for 1997 sci-fi cult classic Starship Troopers, Helldivers 2 is “the rare modern multiplayer game that does almost everything right” by boasting a ton of freedom and a smart progression system that doesn’t nickel and dime players, according to IGN’s review.
After originally arriving on PlayStation 5 and PC, Helldivers 2 also came to Xbox Series X|S in August, 2025.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
